Thursday, 25 September 2008

I saw this on Monday, and it really made me laugh a lot. It wasn't quite as funny as I had hoped it was going to be, and most of the things that really made me laugh stemmed from Robert Downey Jr's brilliant performance as a white Method actor playing a black army sergeant. None of the other actors' characters could really hold a candle to it, and none of their lines seemed to be quite up at his level.

The only other thing in the film which came close to being as good or funny as Downey Jr was Tom Cruise cameoing as a deranged studio boss; it's a great visual gag to see Tom Cruise in a fat suit, bald and bearded and swearing with every other word, and he uses some real choice phrases. The plot is crazy but cool, although it's obvious from the start what is going to have happened by the resolution. It is a bit by the numbers in terms of the tropes that are used, but the specifics (and the heavyweight nature of many of the cast) do elevate it above what could have been just another comedy.